To The White House

In response to:

I very much enjoyed the book review of The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House by Edward Klein written by Kwame Anthony Appiah [NYR, November 8], in which Appiah questions the truth of Klein’s assertion that Obama “never called the people who had brought him to the dance.” I was personally called by Klein during his research on this book and was asked to corroborate this claim. I told Klein that it was surely not true because I knew friends and neighbors who had supported Obama and were subsequently invited to the White House on a number of occasions. Not surprisingly, Klein seems not to have used his discussion with me in his writing. Kwame Anthony Appiah is quite correct in his doubt about this claim.